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Monthly Archives: September 2014

Hey you, how are you? Hope you are doing alright. Me? I’m okay, just had a double jaw surgery about a couple of weeks ago to fix my biting problem. While recovering from the massive swelling, not being able to bite and chew is killing me. I’m basically eating baby food right now. As a food lover, it’s not so nice. Besides the pain and lack of energy, I do enjoy my 4 weeks sick leave. And this allows me to finally have time to take a break from my busy life, sit in front of my computer and talk to you

Before my surgery, I discovered a super good recipe that I must share with you. I have had a few meringues in my life, mostly from good cafes. You know, those that are loaded, have great atmosphere, good selection of pastries, good terrace facing a garden and etc. In another word, those places that made me feel so good that I must sit down with a cup of coffee and a pie, or a piece of cake. So I have tried their meringues. Looking huge, white, hard, very hard, oh and very sweet, what else should I say? Why on earth would anyone like this kind of a dessert? At that time I didn’t understand.

That day at work, I was out of ideas. But I must come up with a dessert for 20 people, like right now. Didn’t really have the energy to start mixing a cake dough, somehow I felt like making meringue, the first time ever! (Yeah I like taking risk) So I googled and found a recipe from my all time favourite food blogger, Mimi Thorisson, an amazing woman who has beautiful children, dogs, great photographer husband and lives in Medoc. That’d be a perfect dream to many I believe. And she writes awesome blog Manger, sharing marvellous recipes about French cuisine that always blow my mind away. When I found her recipe for meringue, I knew that it is going to turn out great. So I started to take out my eggs and sugar immediately. I had no doubt about it at all.

Not to forget to mention that my electric mixer is broken, I was literally beating a huge load of egg whites with my hands, for 20 people. The weather is cold but I was sweating, as you can imagine. It took 20 minutes more than estimation. 🙂

Everything was worth it when I took my first bite of the fresh meringue. ‘Heavenly! It is heavenly good! Oh my god.’, my colleague repeated. I could not believe that meringue can be so good. (Well, it means that I have had bad ones) I finally realised what a real meringue supposed to taste like. The fragrance of egg white lingered in my mouth wonderfully. Like Mimi wrote, it should be crispy from the outside and soft from the inside. And she was so right. I thought one was too big for me, but I ate 2 in a row. And I made them again and again. No fail.

1) In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites and salt until frothy. Add the potato flour and sugar (1-2 tbsp at a time) gradually and continue whisking. (You should add the sugar in small quantities until the end of the process.)

2) When the egg whites form stiff peaks (Tips: turn the bowl upside down and it should stay nicely in the bowl without dropping to your head), gently fold in the cocoa powder to create nice swirls in the egg whites.

3) With the help of two spoons, spoon the egg whites onto the parchment-lined baking tray. The meringues should be about 10-12 cm large and 6 cm high (for big making ones). ‘Twirl’ your spoon around and finish off with a spiky peak.

4)Finally ‘dust’ some cocoa powder on top of each meringue and (optionally) use a small fork to gently draw a few more swirls

5) Bake for 1 hour 10 minutes, switch off the oven, and leave them to cool inside the oven with the door slightly open for 15 minutes.

For this recipe Mimi has made a chocolate sauce to serve with the meringues. I have tried it but it was a little too sweet for my own preference. I have created an easy raspberry sauce that I thought it goes really well with these meringues. You know, a little kick of sourness and berry flavour together with the sweetness from the meringues. Oh, and the colour too! 😉

Raspberry sauce:

200g Frozen raspberry

100ml Water

50g Sugar

1 tbsp Potato flour +2 tbsp water for mixing together

Juice of 1/2 lime

Methods:

1) In a saucepan, put in raspberry, water and sugar and bring to boil. Mix well until sugar is dissolved.

2) Squeeze in the lime juice. Slowly pour and stir in the ‘potato flour mixture’ to the saucepan. The sauce should start to thicken up already. Turn off the heat and let it cool completely before serving. Serve with meringues, or other desserts together with fresh berries on top. Voila!